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Following a series of town hall meetings in which First Ward residents have accused the Columbia Police Department of little community involvement, the department and the Columbia Neighborhood Watch are hosting a Neighborhood Watch Revitalization meeting for the central city today.

The gathering is at 7 p.m. at the Armory Center, 701 E. Ash St. and is specifically focused on police beats 50 and 55, which make up much of the First Ward.

n 1986, Bill Mullins, a Columbia resident and former video store owner, left the Black Jack table at a Las Vegas casino and walked to a Texas Hold’em game being played nearby. Back then, Mullins wasn’t an extremely experienced poker player. In fact, he didn’t know what a flush was.

But as Mullins tells it, he sat down at that table and won more than $100 off a royal flush, the highest hand in poker.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world of Middle Earth has been a frequent setting for productions since the Oscar-winning films revived the “Lord of the Rings.” This phenomenon recently hit Columbia in a live showing of “The Hobbit.”

Underneath the dwarf and hobbit costumes were children from third to seventh grade helping unveil a new youth theater company in Columbia called Performing Arts in Children’s Education, or PACE. “The Hobbit,” which was the group’s first production, debuted the weekend of May 1 at Smithton Middle School.

Developers of a planned Wal-Mart at Broadway and Fairview Road have decided to seek a larger store that will require rezoning and could have a final plan ready for the city as early as the end of the month.

“The plan should be done by the end of the month,” said Craig Van Matre, attorney for the developer.

It didn’t take long for the NCAA’s findings to shake up the MU men’s basketball program.

Assistant coach Lane Odom resigned Tuesday afternoon, and associate coach Tony Harvey was suspended with pay hours after the public release of the NCAA’s official “notice of allegations” outlining the program’s possible violations from 1999 to 2003.

Despite confusion and finger pointing during the second town hall meeting organized to get summer jobs for low-income First Ward youths, a job fair has been scheduled for next week as well as a meeting with Columbia business owners.

The series of meetings has been organized by First Ward Councilwoman Almeta Crayton to get youths out of the streets this summer. She said that too often youths who don’t have anything to do during the summer break hit the streets and run into trouble with the police.

Two MU men’s basketball coaches will be absent from the team’s summer recruiting schedule. One might return this fall. The other has resigned.

Within hours of being implicated in suspected NCAA violations Tuesday, assistant coach Lane Odom submitted his resignation and associate coach Tony Harvey was suspended with pay at least until MU faces the NCAA infractions committee in August.

The NCAA alleges multiple rules violations by the MU basketball program, including an assertion that an assistant coach gave an athlete $250, sources familiar with an NCAA report said Monday.

But after a months-long investigation, the NCAA has thrown out allegations that troubled former player Ricky Clemons received improper academic help to get into MU because the charge couldn’t be substantiated, said the sources, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Despite the negativity of last week’s report on diversity at MU, not every aspect of the university is being criticized.

The report released May 4, which chastised the university for its lack of a “comprehensive approach to diversity,” listed high retention of all underrepresented groups as one of the few things at which MU has been successful. Numbers included in the report also showed that first-time enrollment of minorities has been increasing.

Sex can be a touchy subject, but Salama Gallimore doesn’t mind talking about it with 52 other people — that is, if they’re members of No-Limit Ladies, a support group for minority girls at Hickman High School.

“It is easier to talk to someone your own age going through the same struggles academically, with friends, and with family,” said Gallimore, a senior who is also president of Minority Achievement Scholars and a member of the National Honor Society.

In recent months, millions of Americans have watched as promising young businessmen and women were eliminated from NBC’s “The Apprentice.” Donald Trump squinted his eyes, leaned forward, and pointed a finger at his next victim.

Dave Holt and his company may be improving your life, and you don’t even know it.

Holt is the president and CEO of Lightspeed, a structured array company in Santa Clara, Calif. Structured array is a new way to build semi-conductors, which are crucial to the operation of many gadgets Americans take for granted.

Time is running out for Missouri legislators to amend conceal-and-carry laws.

Some House representatives and senators are hoping to pass a so-called “Hancock fix” to Missouri’s conceal-and-carry laws before Friday, the end of this year’s legislative session. However, some legislators are not optimistic about the likelihood that the bill will pass before then.

Lange Middle School students will turn walking into a competitive sport this week.

The school launched a Coca-Cola sponsored program called “Step with it!” at an assembly Monday morning. The program gives students and faculty “stepometers” — small pedometers that measure numbers of steps — and it gives rewards ranging from bottles of water to calculators to classes that walk the most.

The Columbia Board of Education didn’t vote on administrator’s recommendations regarding teacher raises Monday night because they want to see an even brighter picture painted.

The board was slated to take action on whether to raise the base pay of teachers by $1,000 to $1,200 with previously decided reductions, which included 50 staff positions eliminated. Instead, the board is ignoring that motion and asking for scenarios from administrators involving $1,200 to $1,500 raises to the base pay and restoration of some cuts. The district can do this by taking more out of reserves, but they would still be within recommended budget parameters.

MU's men's basketball program broke numerous NCAA rules from 1999 to 2003, according to the NCAA's 19-page official notice of allegations released this morning during a news conference at MU's Reynolds Alumni Center.

No violations of academic fraud are listed in the NCAA's report. The report says that from 1999 to 2003, members of the basketball program bought meals and had impermissible contact with recruits. Other allegations include unethical conduct by an athletic department staff member and offseason league play by team members.

JEFFERSON CITY — An across-the-board pay raise generally means everyone gets the same amount of money.

But in Missouri’s budget, as recently passed by lawmakers, several thousand of Missouri’s roughly 61,000 state employees would not get the across-the-board, $1,200 annual raise set to take effect July 1.

After years of growing soybeans and corn on his Cole County farm, Kelly Forck has been looking for a way to add value to the commodities he produces. He was recently able to tap into an unusual opportunity: beer made with soybeans.

In an effort to provide farmers an additional source of revenue, a group of Missouri agricultural producers purchased a brewery in Kansas City and formed TransCon AG, a 100 percent farmer-owned cooperative.